Multiplayer Chess

bucklehead
171 ( +1 | -1 )US Chess Championship 2006The US championship started yesterday, and in skimming the games I made my first acquaintance with FM Emory Tate--yes, that same "Tate" the people at ICC babble on and on about. I only found out recently that he was in fact a real player, and reported to be something of a tactical wizard at that. So when I saw him in the pairings for this tournament, I resolved to keep my eye on him.

After one round, I think Tate is my hero.

Opening with an unpretentious reversed-Queen's-Indian kinda thing, he smacked around a GM 200 rating points above him and came away with the win. I will say that Akobian didn't seem up to the challenge (there seem to be several inaccuracies but no blunders), but Tate's plan flowed together quite smoothly.

The game says a great deal about the value of finding good squares for your pieces. Tate's Q stays on h4 for about 17 moves, his KB stays on d3 from move 19 until the end of the game--and yet the potential energy of these pieces (the Q with its attacking threats, the B in the way it "stalemates" black's Nd4) have a lot of say in the outcome of the game.

ccmcacollister
38 ( +1 | -1 )Interesting ... !But I'm not hooked into the ICC chatter, Jeff. Might you have some info on that ... or a direct-link/address to there (their forums)? If so , thanks. I'm not very Google-proficient, but will give it a try too ... see if I can get under 2000 hits for Tate ?! :) [Besides that, I'd like to get this interesting tease of a thread back up top; maybe people just missed it or something!?] }8-)

bucklehead
75 ( +1 | -1 )I think everybody missed itI thought it was an interesting tournament, but woefully under-publicized. For the record (and you can go to the official site at -> www.uschesschampionship.com for more detailed information), Alexander Onischuk won the men's title and Anna Zatonskih is the new US women's champion.

But if you are a US chessplayer you can be forgiven for not being aware of all this. Despite having an overall prize fund of $250,000 and what seems to be a fairly significant operating budget, they didn't bother to market the tournament at all outiside of San Diego, the host city, save for a final-results press release two days after the final.

Nevertheless, I'm grateful to have become acquainted with the fetching Batchimeg "Chimi" Tuvshintugs and her GM-slaying ways during the course of the tournament.

ccmcacollister
43 ( +1 | -1 )YEOW ! $250,000.00 ?!?!Thanks for the info, Jeff. IF I had known about THAT prize fund, I'd have been there for sure! I've never had a chance to fail-to-win anywhere NEAR That before! }8-D !! *** (Truly, I had no idea Chess was back into stratospheric prizes again ... as the last I knew, thought the old USCF was bucking bankruptcy and printing out Chess Life on recycled newsprint ... ?!?!! ) I gotta look into rejoining the Chess Fed !

fmgaijin
57 ( +1 | -1 )Craig, you must QUALIFY!!The U.S. Championship is not the U.S. Open, which will be in Chicago in August. The U.S. Championship is a qualifier-only event. A few people get in by being returning champs or very high-rated men/women in the U.S. lists, but most (even most GM's) must qualify by (1) paying an extra fee when entering certain open events and (2) scoring well enough in the event to gain one of the qualifying spots (the number varies according to the event and is pre-set at the start of the year).

P.S. I had a fun day two decades back playing blitz with Emory, IM Bass, and FM Chow in Chicago one weekend. Emory has quite an imagination!